NEWS- BANNER

9/8 Labor Day weekend was a busy one around the county with good numbers of anglers hitting the lakes and streams. Water temperatures dropped a few degrees, but warm weather again this week will likely bring temps back into the 80's. Water levels have not improved at all. I stopped by Pine Creek yesterday, and it is truly a sad site. Normally nice runs are now barely a trickle. The lakes are down considerably, and the spillways too are barely trickling.

With that, we saw mixed reports over this past week. Most bass fishermen continue to do very well. Largemouth and smallmouth have been active on all of the lakes and good numbers of smallies are being caught in the deeper stretches of Pine Creek. Many different presentations are working too. Anglers on Cowanesque, Tioga, and Hammond, found a good bite using senkos, creature baits, and crankbaits. Strike King 3XD, series 5, and Rapala DT10's were all popular in natural baitfish colors. Popular creature baits included Yamamato flappin hogs, in green pumpkin shades, Zoom baby brush hugs, and Reaction Innovations beavers. Green pumpkins, perch, and blue colors were all popular. Anglers found fish in 1-15 fow. on all three lakes. On Cowanesque, drop shot fishing the deeper humps is starting to produce really nice smallmouth. Yamamato Shad shape worms continue to be our best seller for dropshotting. Wherever you fish, rock and timber are good structures to look for right now.

On the small lakes, texas rigged plastics and various topwater baits have been best. Hills Creek produced many nice fish in the weedbeds. Try punching the mats with a slender profiled bait or working topwater along the edges or on top of the weeds.

Panfish are being caught, but not in any great numbers. Perch were taken by bass fishermen on crankbaits, and some are being caught on live minnows and crawlers in limited numbers. As the water cools, this should start to improve again.

No muskies have been reported lately. Again, once water temps drop fishing should improve for them.

A few hybrid stripers and walleyes are being caught in Hammond and Tioga. Trolling with crawler harnesses has yielded most of them. Colors varied, but chartruese, purple, copper, and silver were popular. Look for fish holding on humps and ledges in 10-20 fow. speeds ranging from 1.4-1.8 have been best.